Baseball mitts or gloves are known, e.g. from U.S. Pat. No. 2,521,488, which can be used with either the left or the right hand by having a compartment formed between a removable padding and one of two sheets, the padding coming to lie against the palm of the inserted hand. According to the disclosure of that patent, the stalls for the index and middle fingers are separated from the thumb stall by a relatively wide web of generally triangular shape and from the two remaining stalls, also joined together, by a similar but narrower web. It is also known to interconnect the front and rear sheets of a baseball glove by lacing which extends along the lateral sheet edges as well as along the peripheries of their extensions defining the finger stalls; see, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,324,219, 2,699,551, 2,281,315, 3,042,929, 3,098,234, 3,300,787 and 3,528,107. Some of these prior patents also show a web secured by the lacing to adjoining finger stalls.
A reversible baseball glove of the conventional type has the disadvantage that the front face of the glove, formed by either of the two peripherally interconnected sheets depending on which hand is being used, does not readily assume the proper concave shape required for the catching of an oncoming ball. Thus, if the two sheets are mutually coextensive when flat, the sheet coming to lie on the convex rear surface would have to be excessively stretched when the glove is curved forward by the player's fingers reaching for a ball.